Message3853

This is not a bug.

When you ask for a string object to dumped on the console, you get the
repr of the string, which in this case is the correct: 'ceci a \xE9t\xE9
fait d\xE9j\xE0'

Python repr (see repr(object))
http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/lib/built-in-funcs.html

Note that all of those character codes are correct, according to the
ISO-8859-1 character encoding (which is presumably the encoding of your
original java source file).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1

You get the correct representation when you print because jython sends
the actual bytes (not the repr) to the terminal, and your terminal
understands them (presumably because it is a ISO-8859-1) aware terminal.

If that was a windows terminal you were working on, you would have to
encode as something like "cp850" to get the correct display of glyphs on
your terminal; i.e. you would have to do:>>> print s.encode("cp850")

Python repr exists to render a *printable* representation that will
display the actual content of the string, regardless of the character
encoding of the terminal you print it to.

I recommend that we close this is "not a bug".